


dancing with your ghost

by taffiecat



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Berlin is alive, But I promise there will be a happy ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kinda, M/M, andres and martin are sad boys, self-deprecation, they deserve all the happiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24682426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taffiecat/pseuds/taffiecat
Summary: Berlin dies. He dies in the Royal Mint of Spain. He dies because of the excessive number of bullets wedged into him by the Spanish police. He dies to save the group, he dies to save his brother.But then, Berlin wakes up. Or rather, Andrés does. Andrés wakes up, facing the sun.In which Andrés witnesses the events from Part 3&4 of La Casa de Papel, and is reunited with Martín... kind of.
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa & Palermo | Martín Berrote, Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 31
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been on a bit of a berlermo writing spree... enjoy :))

The first thing Andrés feels after opening his eyes and taking in his surroundings – determining that he is decidedly _not_ in the Mint anymore – is that he feels nothing at all; the heat of the afternoon sun shining down on his skin should make him wince, as should the sun kissed sand he finds himself laying on. Yet, as he sits up (with a bit too much ease, he absentmindedly thinks to himself, for someone who had supposedly just been shot multiple times in the chest) he finds that he is unaffected by the warmth and feels rather empty.

The second thing he finds as he reaches his hand up to his hair to brush away the sand that should be wedged into his scalp and that he’ll surely be finding in random places for ages to come, is that there is no sand there to brush away.

The third thing he notices, as he becomes increasingly confused and concerned, is that he is still wearing his godforsaken red overall. He groans to himself, rolling his eyes as he curses the person who must have dragged him all the way out of the Mint (… somehow? He’s still working on his theories) and to a tropical paradise, only to leave him in the awful, unwashed, bloodstained piece of clothing. He itches himself out of the overall, unzipping it so that it sits on his waist, refusing to look down just yet at the damage done to his chest by the Spanish police. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, waiting a few seconds before finally looking down. That’s when he really starts to panic.

There are no bullet holes in his skin.

His breathing starts to quicken at an alarming rate. Had it all been a dream? Had he hallucinated the whole thing? He was _so_ sure that he had gotten Helsinki and Nairobi out of the Mint, that he had stayed behind, that he had ordered for Helsinki to blow the tunnel to kingdom come, that he had said his final goodbye to his little brother. He was sure that he had stood up, gun in hand, yelling and shooting at the police. He was sure that he had felt one if not two bullets pierce through his skin, until he felt nothing at all. Almost sure, anyway. He had certainly _seen_ them firing at him and had certainly known that he was fucked.

He gets to his feet as quickly as he can, kicking his combat boots off with superhuman force and pushing the overall all the way down his body in a panic, so that he is wearing nothing but the grey t-shirt riddled with holes that confirm that he should indeed be a dead man and the black trousers that were under his suit. He flings the red piece of clothing closer to the shore, waiting as the tide comes in to take it away forever. Yet as the water brushes over the sand, taking with it various pebbles and shells, the overall remains in its place, untouched.

Andrés screams.

_¿¿¿QUE MIERDA ESTA PASANDO???_

He tries to focus on his breath. In for five, out for five. He then looks around, expecting to see the people around him eyeing him with curiosity at his sudden outburst, but _of course_ no one seems to have heard him. He growls, marching up to the first person in his line of sight. His chosen victim is sitting in a deck chair, reading his newspaper. Andrés stops right in front of him and the man doesn’t flinch.

‘Do you speak Spanish?’ Andrés asks the stranger in front of him, trying his very best to remain calm. The man, again, doesn’t move an inch.

Andrés scrunches up his face, getting more and more agitated as he becomes more and more confused.

‘ _Se_ _ñor_!’ He shouts in the man’s face. The man finally looks up. Andrés can’t help but let out a small laugh at his little victory, thinking that he had finally made an impact on his surroundings. And then, the man does something that throws Andrés world off its axis.

The man gets up so that he and Andrés’ are practically sharing the same breath, and proceeds to walk straight through him, towards the sea.

Andrés can’t move. He stares at the spot where the man had been right before he… well… _walked through him_.

This lasts a couple more seconds, before Andrés finally turns around towards where the stranger is now splashing his feet in the sea, and back again towards where he had been sitting before he had **_walked through him_**.

Andrés sinks to the floor, noticing that no indent is made when his knees hit the ground, noticing that no mark is made when his tears hit the sand.

Andrés walks around the island once he has mustered up the strength to get up from his spot in the sand. He doesn’t bother avoiding bumping into people as he trudges down the busy street and practically sits in some older lady’s lap when he gets in a little vehicle that takes him for a tour around the island. Palawan, he finds out, is where he’s ended up. He supposes it’s nice to have that confirmed for him, even if he has no fucking idea how he got there, or who sent him. Maybe this was Purgatory? Maybe he’d been rejected from Heaven, rejected from Hell, and they spat him out to live amongst humans as a ghost. He has no idea. He needs a drink, but he can’t have a drink because everything he tries to touch goes right through him.

When the sun has set and the stars are out in full force, he eventually finds himself back where he woke up, his overalls still laying where he’d left it, despite being engulfed by waves. Every fibre of his being itches for him to be far away from that cursed spot, so he walks up towards the pavement, leading him to an array of houses and beach huts which overlook the sea. He admires them as he passes by and it offers him an escape from the infinite questions that he has but cannot obtain answers to. He has no idea what time it is, but he supposes that it must be late because there are no lights illuminating the inside of the houses and no one is to be seen for miles. That is, until a little bit later, when he has walked a bit further on and spots a man in the distance, looking out onto the sea. As he approaches the man, he smirks to himself, thinking how much the silhouette reminds him of his brother. The man is tall and therefore is slightly slouched. He has tousled, unkempt hair and, as he grows even closer to the figure, he notices that he even has the same scraggy beard as Sergio. It’s when he notices the man’s glasses that he stops dead in his tracks.

_Hijo de puta_.

The next thing he finds is that he is running, laughing uncontrollably whilst tears fall down his face. He has never felt so _alive_ , which, considering his current ambiguous state of being, makes him laugh even more. He reaches the man – his _hermanito_ – and stands in front of him. His smile never fades and his tears don’t cease as he hovers his hands just short of his brother’s face, as if to cradle him. Sergio remains nonplussed and, in the back of his mind, Andrés is aware that it should break his heart that his brother can’t see him, but he finds that he is too happy, too relieved to care. He stays like that until he notices arms snaking around his brother’s waist and Andrés’ happiness is immediately replaced by confusion, which is only heightened when he sees who the arms belong to. He raises an eyebrow at his brother as he watches the two figures interact, not knowing whether to be impressed or disgusted.

‘Really, _hermanito_? Out of all the women you choose to _finally_ fall in love with, you choose Raquel Murillo?’

Despite his initial shock, Andrés warms to the couple as he listens to Murillo ask Sergio if he is ok. Sergio doesn’t answer, other than to tell her that he’ll leave tomorrow. She nods, and there’s a moment of silence that passes between them, leaving Andrés to question what the topic of the conversation is. He wonders if Sergio has upset Raquel somehow, or whether they have some sort of agreement whereby he has to hand himself into the police.

‘How sure are you that he’ll agree to do this?’, Raquel asks him, and Andrés crosses his theories off his imaginary list.

Sergio lets out a small sigh before replying, his face as rigid as ever, ‘I’m not. And he would be crazy to agree, too’. He pauses a moment, before turning around to face Raquel, ‘But it’s our only shot. And, if I knew the man at all… I would say that he definitely had a crazy streak to him’.

Andrés has no idea who they’re talking about, but he grins as he thinks to himself that he can’t wait to meet this mystery man.

Andrés leaves the dreaded island with Sergio later that day, sitting on the back of his scooter, following him onto a boat, and then another, and then countless more, until they finally reach their destination: Palermo, Italy.


	2. Chapter 2

The handful of times that Andrés had been on a yacht, a speed boat, or a cruise ship (his third wife had convinced him it would be an _excellent_ idea. Or, rather, he had tuned out her incessant chattering and therefore accidentally agreed to her suggestion. Safe to say, their marriage ended shortly after the incident), he had never felt seasick as a result. Yet, he chalks up the nausea he feels as he and his brother step foot onto the mainland to the long nautical journey he’d just had. He and Sergio had been travelling for what felt like forever and had taken multiple different modes of transportation to get from one side of the world to the other, so he was _bound_ to be feeling tired, which will _obviously_ be influencing his senses. Yes, that’s definitely the explanation. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he now knows exactly who Sergio had been referring to back on the starlit beach in Palawan. It has nothing _at all_ to do with the fact that he knows exactly who he is about to see for the first time in far too long.

Before Andrés had found them the monastery on the outskirts of Florence, Martín had lived in a shabby little apartment in Palermo. It was part of a block of flats and it was certainly not to Andrés’ taste; the neighbours were far too loud (not to mention _common_ – you should’ve seen some of the clothes they’d _voluntarily_ wear) and the apartment itself was too small to allow for Martín to accommodate guests, which irritated the Spaniard whenever he would come to visit. Andrés had been relieved (albeit not surprised) when Martín had agreed to live with him in Florence and had proclaimed himself Martín’s saviour as a result. Martín never complained about his apartment, though; whenever Andrés would remind him of the corner of the kitchen covered in mould or the incessant rattling the fan in his bathroom would make, the other man simply told him it was a price he was willing to pay to live in as beautiful a city as Palermo, with its grand architecture and beautiful cuisine. Andrés personally preferred Florence, but he couldn’t deny that he warmed to the city more and more each time Martín spoke of it with such enthusiasm and admiration.

When they round the distantly familiar streets and ultimately reach the apartment, Andrés has to compose himself. He straightens out the grey t-shirt riddled with bullet holes and wishes he could be wearing his favourite suit instead. Just before Sergio knocks on the door, he chides himself for the thought; he knows that no one can see him, so it’s silly to worry about his appearance. He knows that, deep down, it's not even his appearance that he’s worried about: it’s seeing Martín after all these years, seeing what’s become of his engineer.

He hears a faint _Coming!_ above the music that’s blaring from behind the other side of the door. _Amazing, really_ , Andrés thinks, _how as simple a thing as a door is what is separating Mart_ _ín’s peaceful present from his imminent, painful future._

The door opens.

For a split second, Martín is smiling, ready to meet whoever is on the other side with a polite greeting. But then, his eyes land on Sergio, and his smile immediately fades.

Andrés’ brain short-circuits for half a second.

His engineer is there, standing right in front of him. The day he walked out of Martín’s life and away from the plans they’d been working on for so many long days and sleepless nights, he’d resigned himself to believing that he’d never see him again. It had been his intention to die in the Mint all along, and if that hadn’t been possible, he knew he would have to escape to some far away island, just as Sergio had done, and that he would waste away there instead. There was no way of getting back to Martín, no matter how much his soul ached to; and yet, there he was. Time had brought them back together again, after all. Except, of course, Martín had no way of knowing this.

After an uncomfortably long silence and an intense amount of staring, Sergio is the first to speak. When he does, Martín pulls a face and then another, looks away and then looks back, clearly trying to suppress his anger, or his sadness, or both.

Before Sergio can finish his request to come in, Martín moves further into his apartment, and Andrés finds himself walking straight through his brother to follow the other man, not waiting for Sergio to dawdle behind.

He looks around the apartment: it’s exactly as he remembers - small, dark and stuffy - except for the empty bottles that Martín has decorated the place with. Andrés can’t help but notice (mostly because it takes up half of the space in the already-small-enough apartment) the huge model of a blimp hanging from the ceiling. He smiles and turns to look at Martín. He had kept it.

He watches as Martín goes to the fridge, opens it, asking Sergio if he wants a drink, and takes out a milk bottle. He pours himself a glass and turns to face Andrés’ brother. Andrés allows himself to look at him more closely. He looks dishevelled: his hair is longer and less well-kept, he’s wearing a dressing gown over a tank top and some baggy trousers, and he’s got huge bags under his eyes. Andrés wonders how long Martín has been failing to take care of himself properly.

Surely not for the last three years?

He stands right in front of Martín as he drinks his milk, but the man looks directly through him at Sergio. The Argentinian then proceeds to walk through him to approach the other man, just as the stranger on the beach had done when Andrés had first been made aware of his liminal state, yet this time it's so much more painful. Andrés’ heart hurts as he slowly swivels round to watch their interaction.

Martín congratulates Sergio on the heist, congratulates him for being alive. For avoiding the bullets by staying hidden, for being here after three years. Martín calls Sergio a coward, and Andrés has to look away. And then, Martín talks about Sergio’s brother – _about him_ – as if the whole conversation hadn’t been about him all along, but he specifically references his death and Andrés wants nothing more than to shake Martín by the shoulders and shout as loud as he can _I’m alive!_ because maybe he’d hear him, but he wouldn’t. Instead, he just stands there, watching his two favourite people interact, but they become blurry and he wonders why until he lifts his hand up to his face and realises that he is crying. He obviously gets distracted, because the next thing he knows, Martín is flinging his glass of milk against the wall, screaming and crying and swearing and making even more of a mess of the room.

_¡A mí, Andrés no se me muere!_

Andrés’ doesn’t try to stop the tears falling onto his cheeks.

_¡Yo entro y lo saco de los pelos! ¡Hago lo que carajo hace falta! ¡Tengo que volar el edificio a la mierda, lo vuelo a la mierda! Pero a mí no se me muere. Lo dejaste morir._

He wants to reach out and console him. Why can’t he reach out and console him? He briefly determines that this can’t possibly be Purgatory; it must be Hell.

_Él era mi amigo. Era imprescindible para mí. Era mi otra mitad._

Martín is dripping with milk and looks slightly insane, but Martín has never looked more beautiful to Andrés.

The Argentinian challenges Sergio but Andrés can no longer hear them. All he sees is Martín’s sad face, and then Sergio’s sad face, and then they’re hugging, and Martín is repeating _Él era imprescindible para mi_ , and Andrés is still crying. All he can do is watch them hug, and yet all he wants to do is hug them both. All he can do is watch Martín apologise to Sergio, and yet all he wants to do is apologise to Martín himself.

He suddenly feels very overwhelmed and has to turn away and control his breathing. He bitterly laughs to himself about how fucked up this all is. He tries to focus on the blimp model in front of him rather than on his current situation. When the music changes, he turns to see Martín and Sergio dancing together. He smiles at them, but his smile is sad, just like the two men standing before him.

Martín moves past Sergio and suddenly he is next to Andrés, walking back and forth, left to right. He laughs maniacally when Sergio tells him he needs his help – he needs his plan, _their_ plan. He walks right through Andrés as he does so, and Andrés can do nothing but let him.

When Sergio leaves and tells Martín he’ll be back the next day, Andrés really does want to go with his brother. He wants to leave Martín’s desolate apartment filled with all of Martín’s sorrows, but he can’t. He can’t leave, because he already did once. Even if Martín would be none-the-wiser now if Andrés turned his back on him to follow his brother just as he had done all those years ago, he still can’t do it.

He stays, and he watches as Martín sobs after Sergio has left. He tells himself that he deserves to witness all of Martín’s pain, even if it’s the last thing on Earth that he wants to do. He sits by Martín’s side as he cries, whispering affectionate names and stroking a hand through the Argentinian’s hair (even if it has no effect on the other man and Andrés can’t actually feel the bristles of his hairs on his fingertips).

Hours later, Martín stops crying. He stands up, rather abruptly, and lets out a _Bien_ before marching towards his room and packing a suitcase. It takes him a long time to pack; he ruminates over every paper he had saved relating to the plan and chokes back sobs over clothes Andrés recognises as ones that he had bought for or with Martín way back when.

Long into the early hours of the next morning, when Martín falls asleep amidst an open suitcase and a load of clothes, Andrés climbs onto the bed and faces his engineer. Their knees would be touching if only Andrés’ body were solid, they would be sharing the same breath if only Andrés could let out a breath that would impact his surroundings. Maybe if he stays as close to him as possible, Andrés reasons, Martín will feel his presence, feel comforted. Martín had always been very clever.

A voice at the back of his mind tells him that he has no right to be here with Martín, that Martín is in the condition that he is in because of his own actions, his own choices.

But Andrés has always been a selfish man. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amount of times I had to watch that scene to get the interactions right😭 Martín Berrote deserves all of the love and support and must be protected at all costs, thank you for coming to my TED Talk (not that this is a very controversial statement).


	3. Chapter 3

Martín wakes up with the overwhelming feeling that he is being watched.

His eyes fly open, but he remains still for a few seconds. When he has counted to five, he quickly turns his head to look at the doorway, then his wardrobe, and finally the four corners of his room. The bedroom door is shut and the doors to his wardrobe are open; if someone is in his room, the only possible place they could be is under the bed, and that seems fairly unlikely unless they are as flat as a sheet of paper.

 _No one is here_ , Martín reasons to himself, trying to focus on his breathing as he sits up to rest against the headboard. _You just had a nightmare. It’ll be a result of seeing Sergio again after so long_. 

Once he is satisfied that his breathing has returned to its natural rhythm, he runs his hands over his face and through his hair in exasperation at his vivid imagination. Climbing over the mountain of clothes that he had created the night before, he makes his way to his kitchen.

The feeling doesn’t fade away like he had hoped it would, though. He distractedly pours some water into the kettle, half-searching the room for any sign of an intruder. He grabs a bowl, a spoon and some cereal. It isn’t until he has poured the cereal into his bowl and the kettle has boiled that he remembers that he drank (see: spilled; or: smashed dramatically against the wall) all of the milk the night before.

Martín sits at his table with his black coffee and his bowl of cereal sans milk. As he stares far too intensely into his drink, he ruminates over the events of the previous day. He had never thought he would see Sergio of all people turn up at his doorstep so long as he still breathed. Partly because he had assumed Sergio would go into hiding forever after the stunt he had pulled at the Mint, but mostly because he honestly hadn't thought he would have the balls to. Sergio _had_ always been an enigma to him, though, and clearly the man still had a few surprises up his sleeve.

Seeing him outside his door, Martín had honestly thought he had been dreaming. He had felt like he was living inside a nightmare as soon as those fucking glasses and that scraggy beard had come into his peripheral vision, and yet it had been real. Probably. He briefly contemplates the likelihood that he _had_ actually dreamt it all (that would certainly be a preferable option), but this all felt far too real and _cruel_ for even his overactive imagination to conjure up.

The truth is, of all the scenarios Martín _had_ foolishly made up of him getting his old life back, it had always been Andrés who had been on the other side of the door. Either he had ditched his little brother and his godforsaken Perfect Plan and was begging for Martín to forgive him, to take him back, or he had come back for him and they would help Sergio realise his dream _together_. Because, in the end, they were a team, _they were soulmates_ , and they needed each other (didn’t they?). Martín had held out so much hope for so long, and then one day he had turned on his TV and watched as helicopters circled and the police surrounded the Royal Mint of Spain, and he had known that nothing was possible anymore. Andrés had gone ahead with the plan and he wasn’t coming back. Of course, that didn’t stop him from watching the events unfold like a hawk. He read every article that was published about the event, he cursed as he saw Andrés’ name printed alongside disgusting accusations, he smiled despite himself as he watched Andrés – sorry, _Berlin_ – be interviewed, even finding himself concerned at the thick bandage around his friend-turned-stranger's head. It wasn’t until the day he had turned on the TV to the image of Andrés de Fonollosa’s corpse being dragged out of the cursed building that the reality of it all really sunk in.

Feeling the familiar sensation of tears prickling the corners of his eyes, Martín wrenches himself from his thoughts, abandons his now cold cup of coffee and makes his way to his bedroom. Absentmindedly, he picks up the first top he can reach on his bed and some trousers to match. He is about to start undressing, but the feeling that he is being watched returns to him and he suddenly feels self-conscious. Maybe he is subconsciously worried that Sergio could walk in at any minute? He hadn’t specified when he would be coming over, after all. Whatever the reason (he really can’t figure it out - it’s not as if he’s a very shy person when it comes to things like this), he makes his way to his bathroom and shuts the door behind him.

Martín finds it harder than he had expected to leave the apartment behind when Sergio knocks on the door later that day to pick him up. 

It really isn't as though he has particularly had the best years of his life in this place. He remembers that Andrés always hated his apartment, and would express his opinion openly, but that just made Martín all the more fond of the place. When Andrés would come to visit despite his contempt, it always made him feel as though Andrés believed he was _worth_ visiting. And then, there had been the evenings where they had stumbled back, drunk from an evening of antics on the town, and they had both crashed on Martín’s double-bed, forgetting that one of them should probably take the sofa out of politeness of courtesy or something. Those mornings they had woken up so close to each other, legs slightly tangled and arms almost touching, that Martín would sometimes pretend to be asleep still when he felt Andrés stir, just so that the moment could last a little longer. Of course, when he had returned after Florence, after everything in his life no longer held any meaning, it certainly hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, but it had been a place to call home when he really needed one.

He gives his apartment one last glance over his shoulder before following Sergio out with all his belongings, leaving behind his peaceful, miserable, lonely life.

There is a 4x4 parked in the car park that Martín doesn’t recognise and guesses must belong to Sergio. As he rounds the vehicle to put his things in the boot, he notices a woman in the passenger seat of the front of the car and he has to do a double take.

‘Sergio,’ he breathes out, stopping dead in his tracks. The other man must hear some hint of worry in his tone because he stops abruptly too, turning to face Martín with a confused and, if Martín didn’t know any better, concerned look on his face. ‘Sergio, I’ve known you a long time. I know that you’re a clever guy and that you’re obsessed with being in control and being aware of what is happening at all times. So, I can only assume that you are aware of the fact that, sitting in the front of your car, is the Inspector who was in charge of negotiations at the Royal Mint of Spain heist. You know, the heist that you orchestrated. The same Inspector you must’ve handled those negotiations with.’

Sergio’s expression turns unmistakably to annoyance in a matter of seconds.

‘Stop being dramatic, Martín, and get in the car.’

The journey starts off as an awkward one. Martín shouldn’t have expected any less, really. He _was_ in a particularly awkward situation, after all: the man who had driven the love of Martín’s life - Martín’s soulmate - away from him because he was incapable of understanding the concept of love and was a selfish bastard who wanted his brother all to himself, and who had shat all over Martín and said soulmate’s love letter to one another, had come back to ask for permission to use said love letter as a way of freeing a child from torture. And, to top it all off, this man, who had been incapable of understanding the concept of love and who ruined Martín’s life as a result, was apparently in love with the Inspector who was the only one who could have seen to it that his Perfect Plan went down the drain and his life destroyed forever. It’s a lot for Martín to get his head around, so he can’t be to blame if he has some (see: hours worth of) questions. He tries to keep his comments teasing, testing the water between himself and the woman who introduces herself as Lisbon (as if Martín didn’t already know her real name from having read it countless times in various different articles relating to the heist). He admits to himself, after a couple of hours of interaction with her, that she isn’t all that bad, but there is still a part of him that wants to hate her for giving Sergio a chance at love that Sergio had so easily taken away from him.

Whenever he had gone to visit Andrés in Florence or vice versa, the two of them had always flown from one airport to the other. However, with the slight inconvenience of being fugitives of the law came the major inconvenience of not being able to take any other mode of transportation other than the car, and therefore having to endure a twelve-hour journey. Martín falls asleep on more than one occasion as Sergio and Raquel take it in turns to drive. At one point, he wakes up to find his body upright but his head tilted towards the middle of the backseats and, where his neck should be aching and his body feeling uncomfortable, it feels strangely as though he had been lying on someone else’s shoulder for the duration of his nap.

As the sun starts to rise the next day, Martín’s heart tightens as the streets become more and more familiar. The reality of his decision to return to the place where his heart had been ripped out of his chest suddenly becomes intense, and he has to remind himself that this is going to be a very painful day, but that he'll get through it. A little later on, he notices two more 4x4’s joining them as they take the off-roads to reach the monastery and Sergio sends him a sharp look from the rear-view mirror before he can make some sarcastic comment about how they look like they’re in some kind of James Bond film.

When Sergio stops the car and switches off the engine, Martín closes his eyes and lets out an audible sigh before looking up at the monastery before him. There’s no turning back, now.

It feels mindbogglingly strange to be striding through the monastery doors with a bunch of strangers who all seem to be acting as if they own the place, and yet, he somehow manages it. It is all very overwhelming to be walking past the courtyard where he had spent so many hours having breakfast and lounging around, and yet, he manages it. It feels like his heart is about to jump out of his chest when he follows _El Profesor_ through the corridors that ultimately lead to the room that occupies his memories and haunts his nightmare. And yet, there he is: standing in the converted cellar a version of himself had once called home.

Nothing had changed about it. It was like walking into a time capsule: the chalk board still had the same calculations on it that Martín had been working on before his world got shattered to pieces, and, underneath pieces of cloth to avoid them catching dust, there were still the same paintings that had decorated the room; one of them, of course, being the portrait of Andrés that Martín watches Sergio brush off. The memory of the nature of the painting hits him like a tonne of bricks; Martín had woken up as if it were any other day, only to find when he walked into the courtyard for breakfast Andrés posing as if he were some kind of Greek God (which, at the time, Martín had believed to be true) for some stranger. He had really struggled to focus on eating when Andrés had been sat there looking like _that_ , when Andrés seemed to bask in his presence, and appreciate his voyeurism. As quickly as his heart is beating, Martín turns away from the painting and makes his way towards the back of the room, dragging along a table and chair with him.

When Sergio (wait, no, it’s the Professor now) finishes his lecture on the nature of the new plan, Marseille – as the man now calls himself – is the first to greet Martín. Bogotá isn’t far behind, and Martín feels strangely glad that these two figures from his past are there with him. He meets the others not long after, introducing himself as Palermo, but he mostly stays quiet. He is absolutely exhausted, and the moment Sergio declares that they should check out their new quarters, he practically flies to his designated room.

He falls asleep for a good couple of hours. When he wakes up, it is late at night but he still feels slightly more refreshed than he had thought he would, given the circumstances. His stomach automatically gurgles, begging for him to get something to eat; Sergio had stopped at a petrol station at some point in their journey and Lisbon had bought them sandwiches, but, honestly, tuna and sweetcorn really isn’t his favourite and the least she could’ve done was check that he even liked fish in the first place (he doesn't), but _c’est la vie_. He gets up, leaves his room and makes his way to the kitchen, but he finds himself instead in the cellar-turned-classroom. He isn’t really sure how he had become so distracted as to end up there: the kitchen is on the other side of the building to the classroom, after all. Idly, he walks towards the painting sitting at the back of the room and sits himself down on one of the tables to stare at it. It doesn’t take long for the tears to start to fall. It takes even less time for the tears to turn into sobs.

‘What the hell am I doing here,’ he sniffles.

He looks up at the painting from his tear-drenched hands.

‘Why am I putting myself through this, huh? You _broke_ me. You gave me everything I’d wanted and more, and then you _left_ me. You left me here, in this fucking room, to think about every foot I could have possibly put wrong to deserve that kind of goodbye. I never asked for anything from you! I gave and I gave and I never asked for you to give anything in return! I loved you, unconditionally, and that hurt me every day but it was _enough_ because at least you were there – you, you’d go out and find some woman here or some woman there but that was _okay_ because at least you still wanted me, too. What changed? What made you say those things, _do_ those things, and leave? What did I do wrong?’

He stops, trying to catch his breath, but doesn’t take his eyes off the painting. He feels as though it is staring back at him – Andrés' intensely dark eyes boring into his own – and, for a moment, he can fool himself into believing that Andrés is in the room with him. He wants to scream, but he finds that he just doesn’t have the energy.

Suddenly, the air in the room shifts.

Honestly, Martín probably wouldn’t have thought twice about the change if it hadn’t had been for the fact that he knows this room better than any other, maybe even better than he knows the Bank of Spain. As a result, he knows that there are absolutely no areas that would allow for a draft or a gust of wind to enter the room.   
So, you can understand his confusion, then, when some sheets of paper and a couple of pencils go flying from the desk in front of him and onto the floor.


End file.
